A message from Buonaparte accompanied these reports, when they were laid before the Senate. He mentioned his firm alliance with Russia, and said, that he had no doubts of the peace of the continent, but that he ought not to rely upon the false calculations and errors of other courts; and since his neighbours increased their armies, it was a duty incumbent upon him to increase his: he therefore imposed fresh sacrifices upon his people, which were necessary to secure them from heavier, and to lead them to the grand result of a general peace. “I am determined,” said he, “to carry on the war with Spain with the utmost activity, and to destroy the armies which England has disembarked in that country. The future security of my subjects, a maritime peace, and the security of commerce, equally depend upon these important operations. Frenchmen, my projects have but one object in view ... your happiness, and the permanent well-being of your children; and if I know you right, you will hasten to comply with this new call, which is rendered necessary by the interests of the country.”
In the first of Buonaparte’s three constitutions for France, the affectation of Roman titles, and the false taste with which they were applied to offices essentially different, were equally to be remarked. The name of Senate, however, was well retained under his imperial government, just such a Senate having existed during those disgraceful ages of the Roman empire, when a despotism, similar to that which he had established in France, was degrading their country, and preparing the way for the universal barbarism and misery which ensued. The baseness of those wretches who sanctioned the iniquities and cruelties of Tiberius and Caligula was equalled by the obsequious senators of Buonaparte. On the day after his message had been presented, they voted an address, echoing the gross and palpable falsehoods of his assertions, applauding his measures, and appropriating to themselves, and, as far as the crimes of a government can be imputed to the people, to the French nation also, the guilt of his conduct towards Spain. “Your Majesty,” said they, “desires to defend solemn and voluntarily concluded treaties; to maintain a constitution freely discussed, adopted, and sworn to by a national junta; to suppress a barbarous anarchy, which now covers Spain with blood and mourning, and threatens our frontier; to rescue the true Spaniards from a shameful yoke, by which they are oppressed; to assure to them the happiness of being governed by a brother of your Majesty; to annihilate the English troops, who unite their arms with the daggers of the banditti; to avenge the French blood, so basely shed; to put out of all doubt the security of France, and the peace of our posterity; to restore and complete the work of Louis XIV.; to accomplish the wish of the most illustrious of your predecessors, and particularly of him who was by France most beloved; to extend your great power, in order to diminish the miseries of war, and to compel the enemy of the continent to a general peace, which is the sole object of all your measures, and the only means for the repose and prosperity of our country. The will of the French people is, therefore, Sire, the same as that of your Majesty. The war with Spain is politic, just, and necessary.”... If the transactions which are the subject of this history had passed in remote ages, and such a narrative as is here presented had been preserved to us, it would scarcely be possible, when we found the Senate of a great nation, like France, thus solemnly approving and ratifying the conduct of its Emperor, not to suspect that the history had been handed down in an imperfect state; that some facts had been suppressed, and others distorted; for, however credible the usurpation itself might appear, as the act of an individual tyrant, that it should, with its attendant circumstances of perfidy and cruelty, be thus represented as a just and necessary act, by a legislative assembly, and made the ground of a national war, is something so monstrous, that it would startle our belief; and, for the honour of human nature, we should hesitate before we trusted human testimony.